However, the study, published this week, also found that being looked after by grandparents does appear to help develop a baby's vocabulary, particularly for children who also have highly educated mothers.
Researchers suggested this could be because grandparents have more time than other carers to talk to children and are more likely to use grammatically correct sentences and to correct children's language.
The research involved 4,800 children whose mothers all went out to work when they were babies and who are being tracked by the Millennium Cohort Study.
Mothers who took part in the study reported that children cared for by their grandparents had more behavioural problems at age three than those who had been in nursery or looked after by a childminder, nanny or other family member.
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